Being situated on a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve tends to raise the bar for sustainability, and Brock University's facilities team has kept pace. Since 2018, the team has rebuilt the campus cogeneration plant and led a District Energy System electrification project that swapped gas boilers for electric boilers, heat pumps and battery storage, cutting campus emissions by 67 percent while avoiding $5 million in future carbon costs and safeguarding $1.7 billion in campus assets. Their blackPAC energy dashboard turned Brock into a living laboratory for energy literacy and earned a Clean50 Top Project Award in 2024. Now they're delivering SPARK, a $100-million program targeting an 83 percent emissions cut by 2028, two years early. The name, SPARK, is doing exactly what it promises.
Mary Quintana helped translate Brock’s decarbonization vision into an executable strategy, shaping solutions for the DES Electrification Project and SPARK while navigating complex negotiations, aligning resources and partners, and helping secure the funding and institutional support needed to deliver lasting change.
